He told his mother first.
Not because she needed to approve — because she had been the anchor longer than anyone and deserved to know before anyone else what the anchor was being pointed at next.
He found her at the oversight board's weekly session. Not running it — she was always running it — but he waited outside the door until the session ended and the board members filed out and she came last because she always came last, the specific habit of someone who made sure everything was done before they stopped doing it.
She looked at him in the corridor.
At whatever was in his face.
"North and east," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Not the layered expression — the clear one. The expression she used when she had already thought through something and had arrived at the end of the thinking and was present at the conclusion.
